You glance inside sorne deerted and empty warehouses and storage buildings. There's nothing of any value or interest to you inside the first few you come to, but you persist with your search. Roll one die. If you roll 1 or 2, tum to 131. If you roll any other number turn to 347.
Die roll = 6.
You have a lot of ground to cover and many curiously decorated ice buildings to explore. However, in the course of your explorations you do manage to find the following items: some climbing gear (rope, ice picks, a small hammer), oil to replenish your lantern, and some frozen food which the heat of your lantern can thaw out for you. There is enough food for 8 meals here; if you want to take some, you can add to you Provisions total. You must also stop and eat a meal here. After the warmth of your meal, you unroll a blanket and settle down for some sleep. Your search here was lengthy, and you need rest. In the morning, you must eat another meal and resume you investigations elsewhere in the Ice Palace.
We already have the climbing gear, so there's no real significant find. The part where we have to consume 2 meals is kind of pointless since we find more than enough to compensate for that, so we leave the area with the full 10 meals anyway (and even have to leave 5 behind due to lack of space).
An since we can't really proceed anywhere else at the moment, the only thing left to do now is search the last location we haven't yet been to: the homes.
The homes of the Ice Elves are cleaned out, devoid of any internal decorations or possessions, as if the Elves knew about their coming fate and had removed everything belonging to them before the end. At some junctions of small avenues there are piles of ice rubble and, since there isn't anything in the igloo-like houses, you rummage idly in some of this rubble. Test your Luck. If you are Lucky, turn to 123. lf you are Unlucky, tum to 222.
Dice roll = 11 (Unlucky!)
As you are scrabbling away, a large bundle of very hostile fur and claws comes snuffling round the corner. The battle-scarred wolverine is hungry and savage, and is known as a maniacal attacker with razor-sharp claws and teeth. Worse still, the horror at once sprays musk over you: filthy, reeking, skunk-like stuff. You must subtract 1 Point from your SKILL for the duration of this combat only, nauseated by the stench as you are. The powerful wolverine closes in for the kill, frothing at the mouth and eager for the taste of your blood!
GIANT WOLVERINE SKILL 10 STAMINA 9
If you win, you can continue searching through the homes of the Ice Elves or go back and find somewhere else to search in the Ice Palace.
This can actually be more than a nuisance because of the high SKILL and our temporary SKILL-penalty, but at least we still have higher stats than it. It could have been dangerous if we hadn't drunk that Potion of Stamina earlier. And at least this Wolverine doesn't have a healing factor.
COMBAT LOG:
Giant Wolverine 18, Tallpipe 19. GW is at 7.
GW 15, Tallpipe 22. GW is at 5.
GW 18, Tallpipe 13. Tallpipe is at 15.
GW 18, Tallpipe 19. GW Is at 3.
GW 20, Tallpipe 17. Tallpipe is at 13.
GW 18, Tallpipe 20. GW is at 1.
GW 17, Tallpipe 21. GW is killed.
We took a couple of scratches from the giant
adamatium claws, but still came out on top.
Further searching turns up nothing of interest or value, just as you have decided to give up and search somewhere else, however, a very pale spectral figure drifts from a doorway and calls out to you in a pitifully faint voice. The face of the Elf-spirit is filled with sadness, and his hands are held out in supplication. "My father,' he whispers, "buried under the machines in the workshops, punished by Zeverin...he needs life energy to rescue him...don't leave him in eternal agony, I beg you." The spirit is already fading away, its image dissolving before your eyes. "Help him, help him. And beware the evil one in the Great Tower..." The last few words drift away into the silence of the chill air. What will you do now? Will you:
Make straight for the workshops?
Head for the Great Tower?
Set off for some other part of the Ice Palace?
We've already saved his father.
Unfortunately, we're now out of places that we can access. Clearly, we didn't visit the locations in the right sequence. For this area, we don't HAVE to stick to the optimal sequence for all the places when we visit because some locations allow us to revisit (like the Cathedral) if we don't have the required item, and some of the items that we miss (like the incense burner) are not mandatory to winning the game. But there are 2 particular locations which we absolutely
must visit in the right sequence:
We need to get the Ice Bird from the Rainbow Ice Tower before we visit the Black Ice Tower. There was a room in the latter where we were checked for the Ice Bird when we didn't have it. That was the room that could have "activated" the Ice Bird to sing. We needed to get this particular sequence right since there's a required quest item inside the Cathedral. Unfortunately, the text did not say that we can revisit that room if we find the Ice Bird.
So this means, we've essentially lost. We can still proceed with the game for actually quite a while, but without the quest item in the Cathedral we would actually fail near the end. So what do we do here? My own inclination would be to just record a loss here then pretend that we are still allowed to re-visit the Black Ice Tower just to activate the Ice Bird instead of a restart or a rewind for the whole Ice Palace sequence, which obviously would be the least amount of hassle.
Adventure Sheet:
Name: Jefferson Tallpipe
SKILL 11/12 (12 in combat w/ Magic Sword)
STAMINA 13/24
LUCK 9/12
Honour: 10
Equipment: Sword, Leather Armor, Lantern, Backpack, Blanket, Climbing Gear, Tasrin's Ring, Potion of Stamina (restores 1/2 of Initial STAMINA), Crowbar, Bag of Salt, Crossbow (w/ 3 normal bolts & 4 magical bolts), Magic Sword (+1 SKILL unless it's already 12), Shield of Warding (deflects missile attacks on roll of 2-8 on 2D6), Blue Potion, Mealin's Silver Amulet, Ice Bird, Potion of Flying, Potion of Speed (gives extra 2nd attack for first 3 rounds in the first combat after the potion is drunk), Stone Jaguar (SKILL 8, STAMINA 8, can be animated to fight one combat on our behalf), spare lantern oil
Spells: Linkcut, Coldwarding
Gold: 21
Provisions: 10/10, +3 elven weybread
